ZEBULON, Ga. – World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series regular Chris Madden has departed Skyline Motorsports, effective immediately.

Replacing him at Skyline Motorsports aboard the Greg Bruening-owned car will be 2015 World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series champion Shane Clanton, who will make his debut with the team during the Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway.

Clanton will be teammates with Decorah, Iowa’s Tyler Bruening.

“I’ve been working with Tyler and Greg Bruening for the past few years, and they are some great people,” said Clanton. “It’s an honor to have the opportunity to take the Bennett Explosives No. 25 Bruening Rock Products/Capital Race Car on the road with the World of Outlaws for the remainder of this season and beyond.”

Many of Clanton’s existing sponsors, including Super K Express, Freeman Plumbing, Advanced Transportation, M&S Concrete and Carolina Concrete Finishers will be on board for his new ride with Skyline Motorsports.

“They’ve got some awesome sponsors, and I’ve got some great ones as well, and we’re going to join forces,” Clanton continued. “I definitely want to thank Ron Davies and everyone at Weldbank Energy for their support over the past few years. This is a definite win-win for everyone involved.”

Clanton will compete in his own Weldbank Energy No. 25 Capital Race Car this Saturday night in a $15,000-to-win, Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event at Tennessee’s Smoky Mountain Speedway.

Following the event at Smoky Mountain Speedway, he’ll make the transition into his Skyline Motorsports No. 25 Bruening Rock Products/ Bennett Explosives/ Super K Express/ Capital Race Car/Clements Racing Engine Super Late Model as he gets ready for next weekend’s Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway.

Skyline Motorsports looks forward to the new partnership.

“We wish Chris [Madden] nothing but the best in his future endeavors,” a statement from Skyline Motorsports noted. “Everyone at Skyline Motorsports is excited to have Shane [Clanton] on board as a team driver, and we can’t wait to see what the future will hold for our partnership.”

Madden is currently fifth in the World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series standings, with Clanton currently ranked sixth.

Madden has not announced his plans for the rest of the season.

LE MANS, France – Toyota has locked out the front row for the 87th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at Circuit de la Sarthe.

The field for the historic 24-hour race will be led by by the No. 7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez.

At the wheel for the pole winning 3:15.497 lap was Kobayashi, who earned the second Le Mans pole of his career, though he came up short of breaking his qualifying record that he set in 2017.

“I am happy to be on pole again here,” Kobayashi said. “Actually I was hoping I could improve on my 2017 lap record but I was missing a little bit of time. Two years ago the track conditions and traffic were perfect; it wasn’t quite the same this time. But it’s a great feeling to be on pole and now we put all our effort to get the result on Sunday afternoon.”

Starting second will be the No. 8 Toyota entry driven by two-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima. The trio, who were .411 of a second shy of the No. 7 Toyota entry, are the defending winners at Le Mans.

“I feel good with the result; it’s job done for us,” said Alonso. “We wanted to get both Toyota’s on the front row and we managed it. The privateers were very close but we performed well to stay ahead and also get ready for the weekend. It’s always tough to race for 24 hours so we will prepare ourselves well on Friday and be ready for the fight.”

SMP Racing’s No. 17 qualified third with Egor Orudzhev at the wheel. He’ll share the car with Stéphane Sarrazin and Sergey Sirotkin.

In LMP2, the Graff squad snatched the top spot with a best lap of 3:25.073 courtesy of Tristan Gommendy. He’ll share the Graff Oreca 07-Gibson with Vincent Capillaire and Jonathan Hirschi.

TDS Racing’s Loic Duval, François Perrodo and Matthieu Vaxiviere will start second in the LMP2 class.

In the GTE Pro division, Aston Martin Racing’s Marco Sorensen put the British brand on the class pole with a lap of 3:48.000. He’ll be joined in the No. 95 entry by Nicki Thiim and Darren Turner.

Second in GTE Pro is the No. 67 Ford GT driven by Harry Tincknell, Andy Priaulx and Jonathan Bomarito. Corvette Racing’s No. 63 entry driven by Antonio García, Jan Magnussen and Mike Rockenfeller qualified third in class.

Lastly, Porsche swept the top-three positions in GTE Am. Matteo Cairoli led the way for Dempsey-Proton Racing, topping the charts with a 3:51.439. He’ll share the No. 88 Porsche with Satoshi Hoshino and Giorgio Roda.

England 258 for 4 (Jones 80, Taylor 70) beat West Indies 131 (Kycia Knight 38, Cross 2-16, Ecclestone 2-27) by 135 runs (DLS method)

Entertaining batting from Amy Jones and Sarah Taylor led England to a comprehensive 135-run victory over West Indies at Chelmsford and a 3-0 sweep of their ODI series.

Jones's 80 off 83 balls was her fifth half-century in six ODI innings and added to her 91 in the series opener in Leicester, leading to her being named Player of the Match and Player of the Series on her 26th birthday.

Jones put her form down to "increasing confidence on the back of some good scores" and hard work on her batting.

"I've had the backing to open the batting and that's where I love batting and I feel really comfortable there," Jones said.

It was a rock-solid performance by England's top order with Tammy Beaumont falling just short of her fifty and Heather Knight putting on a wonderful cameo of 40 runs off just 19 deliveries to lay the foundation for victory in a match reduced to 39 overs per side after a rain delay of nearly two and a half hours in the 11th over of the match.

Having won the toss and sent England in, West Indies were simply outplayed again, left with far too much to do chasing a target of 267 revised under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method as England kept the pressure on with the ball and in the field.

Bryony Smith, the 21-year-old from Surrey, made her ODI debut having played three T20Is in the tri-series with Australia and India in Mumbai early last year. Usually an opener for her county, Smith was slated to bat at No. 7 and, while her services weren't needed with the bat, she was amongst the wickets in her eight overs of off-spin, claiming 1 for 20. Kate Cross was the pick of the England bowlers with 2 for 16 off six overs, while Sophie Ecclestone also claimed two.

Adding to West Indies' woes ahead of their three-match T20I series starting against England next week, captain Stafanie Taylor left the ground for scans after injuring her hand while fielding. Britney Cooper - called into the touring party to replace Deandra Dottin, who was a late omission with a shoulder injury - was battling illness throughout this match but she will have the best part of five days to recover before the first match at Northampton on Tuesday.

When play resumed after the rain, Jones, unbeaten on 16, and Beaumont, not out 27, really started scoring freely. Beaumont appeared aggrieved at being adjudged lbw to Afy Fletcher on 46 attempting one of several reverse sweeps from the England line-up, suggesting she believed she had got bat on ball.

Her dismissal brought Sarah Taylor to the crease and the England wicketkeeper answered some probing questions about her batting that had arisen since her last ODI score of note, a century against South Africa scored a year and a day - or nine innings - ago. Her 70 off 61 deliveries was full of magnificent stroke play, including more reverse sweeps, until she scooped Hayley Matthews to Shamilia Connell at third man.

Connell had already taken a sharp catch that flew to her at mid-wicket to dismiss Dani Wyatt, who came in when Jones took on a Matthews short ball and skied it to a diving Cooper at deep mid-wicket.

Knight then put on a wonderful display, picking off runs, including two big sixes, to push her side to another daunting total for a West Indies outfit that has struggled all round, but particularly with the bat, so far on this tour. The fact that Kycia Knight's 38 in this match was their second-highest individual score behind Chedean Nation unbeaten 42 in the series opener put the magnitude of West Indies' task in perspective.

Knight fell to a typically sharp catch behind the stumps to Sarah Taylor when she got a faint outside edge on a Cross delivery and Nation was unhappy in the extreme when she was given out lbw to Ecclestone with replays suggesting there may have been nothing but bat on ball.

But it was Fran Wilson - coming into the side with Smith and Jenny Gunn as Nat Sciver, Katherine Brunt and Laura Marsh were rested - who effected the dismissal of the match, if not the series. Diving to her left at cover, Wilson managed to grab the ball whilst horizontal in mid-air to dismiss Matthews off Cross with a catch that was nothing short of spectacular.

With Stafanie Taylor unable to bat, West Indies were an important player down and Knight described England's performance as their best of the series.

"We've just been really clinical, really ruthless, in what we've done and the most pleasing thing is different people have stood up at different times and we've just been really professional and it's really good signs," Knight said. "Winning's become a real habit so we just want to keep that going as long as we can."

The win lifted England above Australia at the top of the ICC Women's Championship standings, although England have played six matches more.

A few days after the 2015 Trent Bridge debacle, Josh Hazlewood cut an even more agitated figure than the rest at Northampton when advised by the Australian selectors Darren Lehmann and Rod Marsh that his first Ashes series was over with one Test remaining. Four years on, he feels better prepared for his second tilt at a series in England having not lasted the distance four years ago, despite coming off a six-month lay-off due to his back injury.

Hazlewood's Test career was just five matches old when he took the new ball in Cardiff but he had made an impressive start with 24 wickets at 19.08 against India and West Indies. His overall figures for the Ashes of 16 wickets at 25.75 did not look shabby but at key moments he struggled for consistency and admits he was running out of steam before he was dropped for the final Test. His replacement, Peter Siddle, took six wickets as Australia won the dead rubber at The Oval in a selection shift it has since been admitted should have happened earlier.

"I was pretty fresh heading into that tour," he told ESPNcricinfo before departing on the Australia A tour that preludes the Ashes. "I felt like I started really well in the Ashes, on the back of a good West Indies tour and home summer, but it caught up with me body-wise in the third and fourth Test. I think my body let me down more than by skill. I was chasing my tail a bit from there in my first big 12-month cycle of bowling. That was the hardest part."

Australia are aiming to end an 18-year Ashes drought in the UK having not won a series since 2001. Starting with the iconic 2005 tour repeated batting line-ups have been undone by swing, seam and spin at various stages but another key factor, certainly in 2015, was the inability of the Australia bowlers to harness the powers of the Duke ball with the same effectiveness of the England attack. Hazlewood often strayed into the pads or hip of Alastair Cook, allowing the moving new ball to get away from him. It's something he acknowledged four years ago.

"The [different] Dukes ball in the West Indies I found pretty easy to handle," Hazlewood said in late 2015. "I think it was the overhead conditions as well that played a part in England, just to land that ball in the same spot over and over, it's quite easy in Australia with the Kookaburra where it doesn't do as much off the wicket and in the air. It was a bit more a challenge, especially on those two wickets in Tests three and four. We saw how well the English guys did it, and it's something to work on for next time, definitely."

Since then a variation of the Dukes ball has been used for parts of the Sheffield Shield season over the past two summers and Hazlewood is confident that the attack has built up the skills required to exploit conditions with a key element - not chasing wickets.

"We've seen how Anderson bowls all the time and if you are going to try and copy anyone he's probably the man to take a leaf out of his book"

"That's part of international cricket, adapting to different conditions and different balls," he said. "Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad have bowled a hell of a lot more deliveries with it than us so they'll be a head start there. But we have learnt a fair bit and even playing with the variation in Sheffield Shield, just controlling that swing and seam, the more you do it the better you'll get.

"We are pretty confident with it these days, think it's about not trying to do too much with it, still being that patient bowler I am without trying to bowl that miracle ball. You see it seam and swing and you can try and do too much, it's about bashing away."

One of the main reasons the selectors are leaving naming the Ashes squad so late - it will be announced after Australia play Australia A at the end of July - is to assess how a collection of pace bowlers operate with the Dukes ball in England. Siddle, who is playing for Essex instead of being part of the A squad, is also firmly in the mix as the management try to ensure mistakes of 2015 are not repeated.

With five Tests in six weeks Hazlewood acknowledges it will be unlikely that the same attack will play throughout - particularly from a personal point of view with his recent back injury - but can also see the value in being more flexible with selection based on the individual characteristics of grounds. The pace of James Pattinson is already being earmarked for the flatter surfaces, such as Lord's and The Oval.

"Horses for courses for sure, that's around the world but I think more so in England where there are some flatter wickets as well as the greener tinged ones where more might happen," he said. "You might need a bit more airspeed on those flat wickets and seam bowlers on the greener wickets. England will probably go down that path as well, they have some guys with good airspeed now as well. It's about summing up the conditions."

However, while he knows English conditions will sometimes demand he moves away from the length he would operate on in Australia he doesn't believe he has to significantly change his style of bowling. "I still think you want to be hitting the knee roll and top of the stumps. Whatever length that takes is what I always aim to do. You get a bit more zip in Australia from back-of-a-length so you can still nick guys off whereas in England they might have time to react or leave it so it does make you push up a bit further. We've seen how Anderson bowls all the time and if you are going to try and copy anyone he's probably the man to take a leaf out of his book."

With inputs from Daniel Brettig